How to Storyboard Your Marketing Video

What are the similarities between the process of making a movie, comic book, or brand video? Storyboarding ✨ People love visual content and it’s time to embrace it, so get comfy in your director’s chair and start thinking like a filmmaker on how to breathe new life into your brand content from the beginning of the pre-production phase.

Let’s talk about why and how you should storyboard your videos for all your marketing video needs.

What is a Storyboard?

A storyboard is a visual representation of a video’s narrative, laid out in a sequence of panels or illustrations of each specific scene or shot. Your favourite movies may even have some available for you to take a look at. Similar to how writers have an outline before writing a book, marketers should have a storyboard before creating a video.

There are plenty ways you can storyboard your video. Hand-drawn illustrations are usually the first to come to mind, but you can plan digitally too by sketching or using pictures (or a secret third thing on Lumen5… more below 🤫).

Why You Should Storyboard for Marketing Videos

Storyboarding video content is a powerful technique for marketers. This can be the difference between a 3-star and 5-star video. It aligns closely with the strategic and creative aspects of marketing, ensuring that your video content effectively communicates your brand’s story, capturing your target audience and achieving your goals! It also makes your message extremely clear for everyone in your team involved in producing video content.

Step #1: What type of video do you want to create?

🎞️ Clarify your vision and objectives

Storyboarding helps marketers clarify their vision for the video, ensuing that every scene and transition aligns with the overall marketing goals, message, and branding. It forces the team to think through the content’s purpose, audience, and desired action.

Storyboarding on Lumen5 can look a little different in comparison to the usual way. Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be presented with the video creation page. Imagine this as your table read moment. Make sure you have your branding together and an idea on what you want the video to look like. Have you taken advantage of Lumen5’s branded templates? If not, select the template that best matches your video idea.

Not sure what you need to create? Don’t want to use a template? No worries — just hit skip on the right-hand side of your screen; we’ll select a template for you and take you to the next page.

Step #2: Compose your script

🎞️ Improve your storytelling and visualize complex ideas

In Lumen5, you can insert an article, upload a PDF, or use our idea-to-video feature. Our AI Script Composer will then suggest a few scripts, and give you the chance to edit the tone and duration to determine which suits your video the best. Similar to storyboarding, this gives marketers the chance to clarify the vision for the video and makes you think about your desired action. This is similar to adding lines of dialogue in a film’s storyboard. 

Next is fine-tuning. If you want to use an AI voice, Lumen5 has over 40 to choose from—what best suits the vibe of your video? Additionally, this is also the time to edit your script and kill your darlings (sometimes you must!).

Explainer or product videos can be information heavy. Storyboarding videos with complex concepts gives you time to really see how your final video will communicate complex information in an accessible and engaging manner.

What else is there to say other than action?

Step #3: Create your video

🎞️ Thrive in post-production and enhance your creativity

By the time you get to this stage, you should have a clear vision of what your video should look like. Luckily, you don’t need to spend 3 months on set – how about getting your video curated in 3 minutes? 🤭

The process of creating a storyboard encourages creative thinking and problem-solving, allowing marketers to explore different visual narrative possibilities, in this case before your video is created with our magical AI. This can lead to more innovative and effective video content, and will give you the creative touch once you’re in our editor.

We’ll create your video with your chosen script, which you properly storyboarded, adding recommended media scenes, stock media, music, and more.

During editing, storyboards serve as a roadmap, guiding the post-production process and ensuring that the final edit aligns with the initial vision. This can be especially helpful when you have a specific message you wish to tell, and hopefully, garner approval and praise from your desired audience.

In conclusion, storyboarding is a critical step in the video content creation process for marketers, helping to ensure that the final product is strategic, coherent, engaging, and aligned with marketing objectives. Try Lumen5 for your storyboard efforts… your content will thank you later. 👋